Post by bobdoc on Sept 21, 2011 7:29:58 GMT -4
First of two Michael interviews I found this morning is at blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/09/20/michael-emerson-on-playing-a-high-tech-vigilante-crimestopper/?mod=google_news_blog
The second is at IGN at tv.ign.com/articles/119/1195228p1.html
Michael Emerson, who won a strong fan following for his portrayal of Ben Linus on the TV show, “Lost,” is coming back to television this fall with “Person of Interest,” which like “Lost” is co-produced by J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot production company.
In the new show, which premieres Thursday, Emerson plays a shadowy billionaire named Mr. Finch who recruits a former CIA agent (Jim Caviezel) to help him prevent violent crimes from happening in New York. A police detective who served in Iraq (Taraji P. Henson) catches a whiff of their vigilante mission and is on their tail. The pilot, written by Jonathan Nolan, made “Person of Interest” one of fall’s more anticipated new dramas, and landed the show the Thursday night time slot of 9 p.m. ET.
Speakeasy caught up with Emerson to discuss his new character, his co-star Caviezel and his former “Lost” castmates.
How did you prepare to play Mr. Finch, a shadowy billionaire software genius?
I did a lot of the stuff that actors traditionally do. I looked at computer geniuses on YouTube and I read a bit about the surveillance culture and government surveillance espionage. But there wasn’t really, for me, a lot of good reference material out there from which I could build the character. Add to that fact that I didn’t build the character of Benjamin Linus that way either. I see now that what I’m tending to do is build these characters scene by scene. By rattling around inside each scene, seeing how it ticks, how I can make it most gripping or interesting or dramatic, and then as I go along I can occasionally step back from it and then say oh, this is something that is characteristic of this fictional person.
For example, the limp that Mr. Finch has, was that written into the script?
There was language in the pilot, the first draft I read, that said Mr. Finch: a man wounded in body and psyche. The suggestion that he had some handicap. So that’s a thing I had to spend a lot of time thinking about. I thought, what if I do something too contorted or too physically challenging and then the show is a success, and then I end up having to do that thing, whatever it is, for years and years? And spend a fortune on massage and physical therapy. I thought, let me be proactive and figure out my own handicap before we even start shooting. I played around with some things and I pieced together two little disabilities into one larger disability, and I think that they’re not only effective but they’re actually healthy to do for the most part, so that it won’t kill me over the course of many years.
How is your chemistry with Jim Caviezel? Much of the show rests on the relationship between your two characters.
We get along very well. I think we make a good team by being such different kinds of actors. Between the two of us we make a kind of vigilante odd couple. It’s in the writing too, but it’s also in the way we two actors approach our parts. It makes me wonder, and I think will make the audience wonder, how can these two men share this mission? How will two such different persons ever get along well enough together to survive this very dangerous work they’ve undertaken? I think it creates a nice kind of friction.
Do you keep in touch with other former cast members of “Lost”?
I stay in close touch with Terry [O’Quinn]. I talk regularly with Terry and with Jorge [Garcia]. Jorge and I got to be pals on the show. He and Beth housesat for us for six months in L.A. when the show was over and we were in New York. I like to hear what they’re working on. I’ll be curious because Jorge is still very much part of the Bad Robot family, he’s doing “Alcatraz” in Vancouver and he’s working for Liz Sarnoff who’s just a delightful writer, so I’ll always want to know what’s going on upon that end of the J.J. universe.
In the new show, which premieres Thursday, Emerson plays a shadowy billionaire named Mr. Finch who recruits a former CIA agent (Jim Caviezel) to help him prevent violent crimes from happening in New York. A police detective who served in Iraq (Taraji P. Henson) catches a whiff of their vigilante mission and is on their tail. The pilot, written by Jonathan Nolan, made “Person of Interest” one of fall’s more anticipated new dramas, and landed the show the Thursday night time slot of 9 p.m. ET.
Speakeasy caught up with Emerson to discuss his new character, his co-star Caviezel and his former “Lost” castmates.
How did you prepare to play Mr. Finch, a shadowy billionaire software genius?
I did a lot of the stuff that actors traditionally do. I looked at computer geniuses on YouTube and I read a bit about the surveillance culture and government surveillance espionage. But there wasn’t really, for me, a lot of good reference material out there from which I could build the character. Add to that fact that I didn’t build the character of Benjamin Linus that way either. I see now that what I’m tending to do is build these characters scene by scene. By rattling around inside each scene, seeing how it ticks, how I can make it most gripping or interesting or dramatic, and then as I go along I can occasionally step back from it and then say oh, this is something that is characteristic of this fictional person.
For example, the limp that Mr. Finch has, was that written into the script?
There was language in the pilot, the first draft I read, that said Mr. Finch: a man wounded in body and psyche. The suggestion that he had some handicap. So that’s a thing I had to spend a lot of time thinking about. I thought, what if I do something too contorted or too physically challenging and then the show is a success, and then I end up having to do that thing, whatever it is, for years and years? And spend a fortune on massage and physical therapy. I thought, let me be proactive and figure out my own handicap before we even start shooting. I played around with some things and I pieced together two little disabilities into one larger disability, and I think that they’re not only effective but they’re actually healthy to do for the most part, so that it won’t kill me over the course of many years.
How is your chemistry with Jim Caviezel? Much of the show rests on the relationship between your two characters.
We get along very well. I think we make a good team by being such different kinds of actors. Between the two of us we make a kind of vigilante odd couple. It’s in the writing too, but it’s also in the way we two actors approach our parts. It makes me wonder, and I think will make the audience wonder, how can these two men share this mission? How will two such different persons ever get along well enough together to survive this very dangerous work they’ve undertaken? I think it creates a nice kind of friction.
Do you keep in touch with other former cast members of “Lost”?
I stay in close touch with Terry [O’Quinn]. I talk regularly with Terry and with Jorge [Garcia]. Jorge and I got to be pals on the show. He and Beth housesat for us for six months in L.A. when the show was over and we were in New York. I like to hear what they’re working on. I’ll be curious because Jorge is still very much part of the Bad Robot family, he’s doing “Alcatraz” in Vancouver and he’s working for Liz Sarnoff who’s just a delightful writer, so I’ll always want to know what’s going on upon that end of the J.J. universe.
The second is at IGN at tv.ign.com/articles/119/1195228p1.html
This Thursday, September 22nd, CBS adds a new kind of "case of the week" procedural to its line-up. Person of Interest, from J.J. Abrams and Dark Knight writer Jonathan Nolan (AKA Jonah Nolan), brings us into the world of threat-assessment algorithms and 'five minutes from now" sci-fi surveillance technology as Jim Caviezel and Lost's Michael Emerson team up to try to prevent violent New York City crimes before they happen.
Caviezel plays Reese, a dispirited ex-black ops soldier who's taken in and funded by a Emerson's enigmatic billionaire, Finch, so that the two of them can work off a never-ending list of social security numbers spit out of a "pre crime" machine and try and spread some justice around.
IGN had the chance to talk to Emerson about his new primetime network role and what it's like to be playing a new spin on "the man with secrets."
IGN: What was it like going from a show as serialized as Lost to a "case of the week" environment on Person of Interest?
Michael Emerson: I guess I don't feel it that much because it's still a process of showing up each day and playing scenes and getting to the heart of the scene. It has more an effect on the viewers than it does on me as a craftsman. Although I suppose I'm aware that we are following some rules. For example: there's going to be a set of stock scenes in the show which I hadn't thought about because I haven't been in on the beginning of a show before. And each show evolves and changes the way that it tells its story as it goes on and I fear that I'm going to be spending a lot of time in my computerized nerve center in the abandoned library. So that's going to be every episode that I'm going to be spending time there. It's not bad, it's just something I noticed.
IGN: But there is still a lot of back story to your character, right?
Emerson: Yes, there's still a lot to be revealed. And even some of the cases of the week bleed over into that. Or are stepping stones to some other mystery. Already they're doing it that way. So there's already the blurring of beginnings and endings to things that I had even thought there was going to be.
IGN: What's it like going from shooting in Hawaii to shooting in New York?
Emerson: It's been so great. I've gone from that completely natural environment to a totally urban environment. It's fun to shoot around in the city that you know, because we explore corners of the city that I've never seen before. But then sometimes we're in very familiar places or sometimes we're even in my neighborhood and I can just walk out of my apartment and go shoot somewhere in mid-town. It's been fun. The weather's been a little too hot for some of the fashionable clothing I'm wearing on the show. We shoot outdoors so much that it's like Lost in a way. In fact, we may shoot as much outdoors as Lost did.
IGN: What was it that attracted you to the role of Finch? What drew you in?
Emerson: I like the "retried genius" quality of the character. I liked that he lived in a secret world and that there was a super-human amount of money and intellect at play. All of that is fun. And the mood of the story is good. I liked that it was a noir-ish, urban high-tech paranoid kind of universe that we were going to be working in.
IGN: Finch seems to be on a crusade for justice but we're not exactly sure why. And it's so expansive that he seems to just wants to help everyone.
Emerson: That's true. For both of them too. For Finch and Reese. Their thirst for justice is stronger than their will to live, I think. To me, both of them are on a kamikaze mission. I haven't fully answered the "whys" of that in my mind yet. There's still a whole lot of back-story for the characters to be revealed as we go along. But that will be done slowly.
IGN: What you just said was very interesting because the idea of someone wanting justice more than their own life sounds a lot like Batman. With Jonah Nolan having written The Dark Knight, is that something that you think about?
Emerson: Yes . And it's always at the back of my mind. And I see - as we go along and we're on our fifth episode now - I see that there's sort of an underpinning of superhero iconography in the show. We both have really strong looks. Both of us could be drawn easily. There's a stylization to the look of us that reminds me of Batman and Dick Tracy and stuff like that. So it's been on my mind. They're not employing super powers, although they seem somewhat super to us. They're employing conventional technology and techniques.
IGN: This story deals a lot with the events of 9/11 and the surveillance technology that stemmed from that event as a safe-guarding device. Were you aware about the number of cameras that were out there?
Emerson: I guess like everybody else I've always been somewhat aware of the number of moments in the day when you're being looked at by some kind of camera. But, Jonah gave me a book that he and [producer] Greg Plageman had read called "The Watchers." And it's a non-fiction book about government surveillance systems and how far-reaching they are. And how highly sophisticated they are. And about the big push, after 9/11, to bring those things up to a high state of readiness and operability. So that really opened my eyes. Because at first I thought "our story has a bit of sci-fi about it." But it doesn't really. Add slightly more cameras and slightly more sophisticated pattern-recognition software and you'e got our show's "machine."
IGN: After Lost, everyone was intently watching to see what show you went for next. Was it always your plan to find another series to join up with or did you want to do some guest spots?
Emerson: I thought when Lost wrapped that it would be a good long time before I did a series again. Because I thought that one doesn't want to wear out their welcome. Maybe people had looked at my mug enough for a while. So I took a fair amount of time off. But by the same token, you don't want to lay low too long and have people stop caring about what you're working on. [My wife] Carrie [Preston] and I had a project that we were working on and that occupied a lot of that dark year in between shows. But it just wasn't meant to be this year and so it got put on a back burner and suddenly we were both looking at not having any work to do. So I thought I'd much rather be working since I don't really enjoy being idle. It's not like I'm an actor who gets a lot of offers to do parts in movies or anything like that so I felt that since TV was the world that had embraced me, that I should look at a lot of the good scripts out there. And luckily I was in a relationship with Bad Robot [Abrams' production comany], who I'd hoped to work with, and they had this other script that was really good and I began to be worried about finding a great show but then finding out that the show shoots in Winnipeg. Or Vancouver. Or somewhere else far away. And I didn't want to put in for all that time being away from where I live and being away from Carrie. And living like a tourist. So I tried to find something in a town where I lived.
IGN: Finch finds Reese because he seems to need someone to carry out the violent action needed for this mission. But does Finch himself ever get caught up in the action?
Emerson: Oh he does, very quickly. [laughs] That was a big surprise to me about the role. I thought I was going to be like Charlie on Charlie's Angels. I would just be nicely dressed and in some place where there was no danger, with Reese doing all the action. But they've figured out some very clever ways to get Finch involved and out of his library. So the work has not been as quiet as I originally thought. [laughs]
Caviezel plays Reese, a dispirited ex-black ops soldier who's taken in and funded by a Emerson's enigmatic billionaire, Finch, so that the two of them can work off a never-ending list of social security numbers spit out of a "pre crime" machine and try and spread some justice around.
IGN had the chance to talk to Emerson about his new primetime network role and what it's like to be playing a new spin on "the man with secrets."
IGN: What was it like going from a show as serialized as Lost to a "case of the week" environment on Person of Interest?
Michael Emerson: I guess I don't feel it that much because it's still a process of showing up each day and playing scenes and getting to the heart of the scene. It has more an effect on the viewers than it does on me as a craftsman. Although I suppose I'm aware that we are following some rules. For example: there's going to be a set of stock scenes in the show which I hadn't thought about because I haven't been in on the beginning of a show before. And each show evolves and changes the way that it tells its story as it goes on and I fear that I'm going to be spending a lot of time in my computerized nerve center in the abandoned library. So that's going to be every episode that I'm going to be spending time there. It's not bad, it's just something I noticed.
IGN: But there is still a lot of back story to your character, right?
Emerson: Yes, there's still a lot to be revealed. And even some of the cases of the week bleed over into that. Or are stepping stones to some other mystery. Already they're doing it that way. So there's already the blurring of beginnings and endings to things that I had even thought there was going to be.
IGN: What's it like going from shooting in Hawaii to shooting in New York?
Emerson: It's been so great. I've gone from that completely natural environment to a totally urban environment. It's fun to shoot around in the city that you know, because we explore corners of the city that I've never seen before. But then sometimes we're in very familiar places or sometimes we're even in my neighborhood and I can just walk out of my apartment and go shoot somewhere in mid-town. It's been fun. The weather's been a little too hot for some of the fashionable clothing I'm wearing on the show. We shoot outdoors so much that it's like Lost in a way. In fact, we may shoot as much outdoors as Lost did.
IGN: What was it that attracted you to the role of Finch? What drew you in?
Emerson: I like the "retried genius" quality of the character. I liked that he lived in a secret world and that there was a super-human amount of money and intellect at play. All of that is fun. And the mood of the story is good. I liked that it was a noir-ish, urban high-tech paranoid kind of universe that we were going to be working in.
IGN: Finch seems to be on a crusade for justice but we're not exactly sure why. And it's so expansive that he seems to just wants to help everyone.
Emerson: That's true. For both of them too. For Finch and Reese. Their thirst for justice is stronger than their will to live, I think. To me, both of them are on a kamikaze mission. I haven't fully answered the "whys" of that in my mind yet. There's still a whole lot of back-story for the characters to be revealed as we go along. But that will be done slowly.
IGN: What you just said was very interesting because the idea of someone wanting justice more than their own life sounds a lot like Batman. With Jonah Nolan having written The Dark Knight, is that something that you think about?
Emerson: Yes . And it's always at the back of my mind. And I see - as we go along and we're on our fifth episode now - I see that there's sort of an underpinning of superhero iconography in the show. We both have really strong looks. Both of us could be drawn easily. There's a stylization to the look of us that reminds me of Batman and Dick Tracy and stuff like that. So it's been on my mind. They're not employing super powers, although they seem somewhat super to us. They're employing conventional technology and techniques.
IGN: This story deals a lot with the events of 9/11 and the surveillance technology that stemmed from that event as a safe-guarding device. Were you aware about the number of cameras that were out there?
Emerson: I guess like everybody else I've always been somewhat aware of the number of moments in the day when you're being looked at by some kind of camera. But, Jonah gave me a book that he and [producer] Greg Plageman had read called "The Watchers." And it's a non-fiction book about government surveillance systems and how far-reaching they are. And how highly sophisticated they are. And about the big push, after 9/11, to bring those things up to a high state of readiness and operability. So that really opened my eyes. Because at first I thought "our story has a bit of sci-fi about it." But it doesn't really. Add slightly more cameras and slightly more sophisticated pattern-recognition software and you'e got our show's "machine."
IGN: After Lost, everyone was intently watching to see what show you went for next. Was it always your plan to find another series to join up with or did you want to do some guest spots?
Emerson: I thought when Lost wrapped that it would be a good long time before I did a series again. Because I thought that one doesn't want to wear out their welcome. Maybe people had looked at my mug enough for a while. So I took a fair amount of time off. But by the same token, you don't want to lay low too long and have people stop caring about what you're working on. [My wife] Carrie [Preston] and I had a project that we were working on and that occupied a lot of that dark year in between shows. But it just wasn't meant to be this year and so it got put on a back burner and suddenly we were both looking at not having any work to do. So I thought I'd much rather be working since I don't really enjoy being idle. It's not like I'm an actor who gets a lot of offers to do parts in movies or anything like that so I felt that since TV was the world that had embraced me, that I should look at a lot of the good scripts out there. And luckily I was in a relationship with Bad Robot [Abrams' production comany], who I'd hoped to work with, and they had this other script that was really good and I began to be worried about finding a great show but then finding out that the show shoots in Winnipeg. Or Vancouver. Or somewhere else far away. And I didn't want to put in for all that time being away from where I live and being away from Carrie. And living like a tourist. So I tried to find something in a town where I lived.
IGN: Finch finds Reese because he seems to need someone to carry out the violent action needed for this mission. But does Finch himself ever get caught up in the action?
Emerson: Oh he does, very quickly. [laughs] That was a big surprise to me about the role. I thought I was going to be like Charlie on Charlie's Angels. I would just be nicely dressed and in some place where there was no danger, with Reese doing all the action. But they've figured out some very clever ways to get Finch involved and out of his library. So the work has not been as quiet as I originally thought. [laughs]
